Smashing custards.

Do you remember when spam used to be fun? Our friend Ben, Silence Dogood, and Richard Saunders—your faithful bloggers here at Poor Richard’s Almanac—used to look forward to reading the day’s spam allotment and laughing hysterically. This is because, as writers, editors, and teachers, we found the comments, mangled as they were into anguished English by inept auto-translating services, hilarious. No one could invent such unintentionally, sublimely funny combinations of words. Ha!!!

Then, a year or so ago, this type of spam disappeared. It was replaced by perfectly straightforward, intelligible remarks that had absolutely nothing to do with the post in question. They were boring. We missed the old spam.

So you can imagine how our friend Ben’s day was brightened to discover this gem in our spam folder:

“When can the week day suffix not work ahead of a praise? A nine environment dons the need lure. A present sings powering the sigh! Before custard smashes a sustained bad luck. The fear requests the orientating hypocrisy.”

I have no idea what this poor person was trying to say, and I defy even Lewis Carroll or James Joyce to decipher it. But I hope it wasn’t a comment on my latest batch of lottery tickets, or a dire warning that I’ll soon be hit in the face by a custard-pie-throwing maniac. If the latter, though, please make a note: coconut custard is my favorite.

Advertisement